{"id":171233,"date":"2026-08-21T12:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T16:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/?p=171233"},"modified":"2026-08-21T15:12:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T19:12:58","slug":"in-copenhagen-a-fashion-week-model-that-looks-beyond-the-big-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/in-copenhagen-a-fashion-week-model-that-looks-beyond-the-big-four\/","title":{"rendered":"In Copenhagen, A Fashion Week Philosophy That Goes Beyond the Big Four"},"content":{"rendered":"
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STEM SS27 at Copenhagen Fashion Week \/ Photo by Matt Jelonek\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2026, what should a fashion week be?<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed\u2014and attended\u2014an increasing number of local fashion weeks: signs of a decentralisation from the Big Four, and a chance for markets to spotlight talent out of the shadows of the major houses. There’s real pride in watching a place show its own designers, instead of exporting them. But cut off from conversation with the global agenda, a fashion week risks falling for its own reflection, like Narcissus at the water’s edge.<\/p>\n

Copenhagen Fashion Week, which turns twenty this year, avoids that trap through a clear understanding of its market and homegrown talent. But what truly sets the week apart is its willingness to look beyond the constraints of the traditional runway. Adaptable in shape while holding fast to its mission of promoting Nordic design, CPHFW constantly re-evaluates two core questions: what could a fashion week be, and who should it serve?<\/p>\n

Spring\/Summer 27 crystallized CPHFW as a living laboratory of experimentation\u2014a welcome rebuttal to the siloed assembly lines of the Big Four capitals. It asks, and then tests, what a garment, a designer, or a business can be, both within the Nordic market and vis-\u00e0-vis the global industry. If a factory wants an answer that repeats, a laboratory just wants the question to stay open.<\/p>\n

Keeping that question open is a risk, but one CPHFW and its supporters believe is worth taking. Isabella Rose Davey, its chief operating officer who stepped down after this edition, is blunt about the reality: \u201cWe are a not-for-profit. We do not get government funding. We raise our money from partnerships, which I think is incredible in this day and age.\u201d<\/p>\n

A fashion week that lives on partnerships instead of a public mandate must keep earning its place; it can\u2019t lean on the idea that it\u2019s a permanent fixture. Perhaps this is why Davey describes the operation as something perpetually unfinished. She won\u2019t describe the CPHFW NEWTALENT programme\u2014a three-season support scheme for three Nordic designers that she built\u2014as solved. \u201cThey can always be improved,\u201d she says. For her, it\u2019s a live question, not a settled offer: \u201cWhat do creatives actually need, right now, to get from creative to brand to business?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do creatives actually need, right now, to get from creative to brand to business?\u201d – Isabella Rose Davey<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This instinct to treat the model as an open draft is something other fashion weeks could learn from. If the industry archetype of an \u2018emerging designer\u2019 is a recent graduate with a showroom, line sheet, and immediate plans to scale, NEWTALENT breaks the assumption that emerging talent must be unseasoned. \u201cWe need people with experience,\u201d says Davey. It also demonstrates how much broader Nordic design runs than its minimal reputation suggests.<\/p>\n

Stem, the label from Sarah Brunnhuber, is the example Davey reaches for as evidence of such talent. \u201cShe is showing process on product, a vital tenet our industry needs to think about,\u201d Davey notes. Brunnhuber doesn\u2019t even describe herself as a fashion designer: \u201cI\u2019m a textile designer. Textiles come first, and the silhouettes come after.\u201d It\u2019s a practice easily filed as craft, set apart from fashion rather than foundational to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cStem can only exist here in Copenhagen,\u201d Brunnhuber says of the support she receives. \u201cThe motivations behind my work are really supported here, in a way I don\u2019t think would have got through anywhere else.\u201d The designer is currently developing a weaving mill in Denmark to share her singular zero-waste patternmaking technique with others.<\/p>\n

The schedule also stops being purely Nordic through corporate partnerships. With the support of businesses like Zalando, international designers feature alongside local ones. It\u2019s a grammar of relation rather than translation: each designer shows on their own terms, while CPHFW simply makes space.<\/p>\n

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IAM.ISIGO’s Bubu Ogisi \/ Photo: Courtesy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bubu Ogisi, who designs as I.AM.ISIGO out of Lagos, Accra, and Nairobi, returned this season on her own volition, affirming: \u201cThe direction is really setting the tone for how every other fashion week should be\u2014instead of feeling so heavy and exhausting. Each brand still finds a way to differentiate itself through this cleanness or calmness that exudes in Copenhagen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe direction is really setting the tone for how every other fashion week should be\u2014instead of feeling so heavy and exhausting. Each brand still finds a way to differentiate itself through this cleanness or calmness that exudes in Copenhagen.\u201d – Bubu Ogisi<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I.AM.ISIGO\u2019s immersive presentation, Sacred Ecologies, was an act of world-building, \u201creinforcing an indigenous environmental design through the pedagogy of the wandering body.\u201d Ogisi wove banana fibres\u2014first discovered on a trip to Uganda\u2014between ancestral symbolic identities and contemporary materialism, inviting viewers to dream beyond Western ecocriticism. She speaks of her practice as \u201cone body of work\u201d rather than standalone collections. Neither, in the end, is CPHFW.<\/p>\n

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Institution’s Galib Gassanoff \/ Photo: Courtesy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Galib Gassanoff, a Georgian designer of Azerbaijani descent based in Milan, is this year\u2019s Zalando Visionary Award winner. His collection covered the runway in carpets from the Caucasus, Anatolia, Northern Iran, and Central Asia\u2014the culture in which he was raised. Models walked in handmade jorabs from Azerbaijani artisans, knitted with wool from their own livestock, while stitched Tetri (the fractional Georgian currency) bore the weight of freedom from repression.<\/p>\n

Gassanoff could build a faster business if he wanted to: \u201cI know very well how we can instantly make money\u2014cocktail dresses, ruches and crystals, it would sell\u2014but it\u2019s not what I want to do.\u201d Instead, his weavers set their own prices and reserve the right to say no to commissions. \u201cHuman touch,\u201d he says, \u201cwill be the ultimate luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stem’s Sarah Brunnhuber \/ Photo: Courtesy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What these designers describe, again and again, is a support structure knitted together by community rather than competition. Davey calls it an \u201cecosystem\u201d\u2014a framework where established Danish brands, like GANNI, invest in the patronage scheme to underwrite smaller ones. This season, GANNI opened its fabric archive to Brunnhuber, allowing her to apply her own authorship\u2014felting, pleating, unravelling\u2014to create Stem silhouettes. \u201cI submitted the designs and they were like \u2018do it,\u2019 there were no \u2018nos\u2019,\u201d Brunnhuber says. \u201cI don\u2019t think a lot of brands do that.\u201d
\nMentorship is equally central to NEWTALENT. Brunnhuber\u2019s mentors include Bruce Pask<\/a>, AVP of Saks Men\u2019s Fashion office, and Vikram Menon, Director at Fashionex. \u201cWe get short sessions, but I can also just email them questions,\u201d she explains. \u201cI have an easy way to reach out to them, in a way I probably couldn\u2019t otherwise.\u201d Still, the programme continues to adapt based on feedback: \u201cI suggested something around merchandising to figure out which pieces to focus on from a commercial perspective,\u201d Brunnhuber adds. \u201cWe need guidance to make sure we have things in our collection that keep things rolling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps CPHFW\u2019s boldest experiment, however, is its redefinition of success itself. Where the broader industry treats a brand\u2019s continuous scale as the only measure that counts, Davey rejects the premise: \u201cWhy do brands only have to close when they\u2019re being dragged through the financial mud?\u201d A brand doesn\u2019t have to be for life; a designer should be able to pause or pivot without it reading as collapse.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhy do brands only have to close when they\u2019re being dragged through the financial mud?\u201d A brand doesn\u2019t have to be for life; a designer should be able to pause or pivot without it reading as collapse.” – Isabella Rose Davey<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anne Sofie Madsen<\/a> proves the point. After pausing her eponymous label for seven years, Madsen picked up where she left off\u2014now with a co-creative director and a model in step with her life. Skipping a season was once considered career suicide; Madsen\u2019s return is the rebuttal. For Davey, that\u2019s the goal: let a career twist and turn.<\/p>\n

As this season wrapped, CPHFW felt reminiscent of Yggdrasil\u2014the sacred tree of Norse mythology that connects distant geographies from its Nordic roots while constantly adapting to its environment. CPHFW thrives on that same balance between evolution and grounded consistency. It can afford failed experiments because it isn\u2019t staking everything on the illusion that every designer must scale globally. Some brands will succeed. Some will close. Some will become something no one has a name for yet. In Copenhagen, all of that is allowed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adaptable in shape while holding fast to its mission of promoting Nordic design, CPHFW constantly re-evaluates two core questions: what could a fashion week be, and who should it serve?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":454,"featured_media":171306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,15361],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/454"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171233"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171308,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171233\/revisions\/171308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/models.com\/oftheminute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}